Indeed, that's probably the best I've found to date. I'll go over it more carefully in a while. I can certainly understand how Dan (Morvil) was seduced by Dick's delivery LC

Smiley aside, I was not "seduced" by Richard Gendall's delivery, he was simply the first Cornish speaker I encountered. I had previously only had P.A.S. Pool's "Cornish for Beginners" in UC, but didn't have a clue how to pronounce the language in it. When I came to Cornwall in the early 90s I decided to get in touch with Cornish speakers and Richard Gendall was the first on my list because he had invited interested people to do so in one of the magazines he had published in. So I did and I was promptly invited to come round. When I heard Richard Gendall speak Cornish it suddenly sounded like a real language, not just funny words (mis)pronounced by English speakers. I decided that this was the kind of Cornish I wanted to learn. So, I bought his learner's material, dictionaries, and cassettes. That's how I began to learn Cornish. I was not seduced, he didn't try to convince me that this was the best way to learn the language, he simply explained a few things and sent me on my merry way. A very memorable afternoon indeed...

It is true that both wèl and well are read [wɛl], an that either would do. In this case (and it was discussed explicitly) we used the form with the single l because welcom and wolcom are widely attested in Cornish and never with a double ll.

Keith wrote:Why hèn in addition to the already available henn and hedn?

Because *hedn [hɛᵈn] does not exist. What exists is [ˈhɛnə] and [ˈhɛdnə] and [ˈhɛn], which we write henna, hedna, hèn; note that hen is [heːn]. This is quite regular.

Keith wrote:Writing MC keffryz > LC keffrez as kefrës is unnecessary since all 'y's apart from a handful where final and stressed, are pronounced as 'e' in Late usage.

Since [kɛˈfriːz] and [kɛˈfreːz] both exist, SWF writes keffrys and keffres. Since this falls in to the class of bÿs~bës words, we write keffrÿs and keffrës. You, as a speaker of RMC, Keith, would treat both ÿ and ë as [iː] (or your [ɪː], if you really say that) when you encounter them in your reading; speakers of RLC will treat ÿ and ë as [eː].

Keith wrote:But if NJAW feels this to be necessary here, why then does he not also write *ëw, *ën, *ë, *dhëw[g]h for yw, yn, y, dhywgh and similar, which must be just as disconcerting to the handful of Late users he is courting?

Because consensus was that there was no real need to write ÿw~ëw [iːʊ]~[eːʊ] since there is never any ambiguity involved with this high-frequency word. You err in suggesting that *ÿn~ën would be valid, because the vowel is short in both cases and ÿ and ë are always long and stressed. In any case we write the adjectival particle yn [ən] (compare yma [əˈma], ytho [əˈθo]) and the preposition in [ɪn] (with allophonic [ɛn] for some speakers). Why not in and en? Because in a standardized language it just isn't necessary to have alternates for such a high-frequency word. (We normally only write ny ([niː]~[nəɪ]) and why ([ʍiː]~[ʍəɪ]) too, though in this novel in order to emphasize the dialect distinction we write nei, whei (as Stevenson emphasizes English dialect).

Keith wrote:Btw crejy is quite impossible as this would have given Late *creje.

You'll want to explain Lhuyd's kredzhi, then, won't you? I am confident that this is [ˈkrɛdʒi], which is why we write crejy regularly.

Keith wrote:In fact final -y had already changed to -e by the time of the 'classical' texts, going to -a in Tudor times and later. This word should of course be spelled MC kryzi LC kreji.

The facts of the texts suggest otherwise. Your mistake is in positing /i/ and /ɪ/ as separate phonemes and suggesting that they were separate in final position. We acknowledge one phoneme /i/ which is [iː] when long and [ɪ] when short and in absolute auslaut, except in a few (and not all) monosyllables where final stressed [iː] breaks to [əɪ].

Dan et. al. --- No 'slant' was intended. I remembered Dan telling more or less the story he's just repeated about RG and I can fully appreciate his reaction, which to a large extent I share. Gendall speaks Cornish so that it sounds like a natural language, whereas many (but not all) other 'fluent' speakers sound quite unnatural, just as Dan says. My point, in as far as one was implied, was that UC left behind it a 'tradition of mispronunciation' which needs to be tackled, not that LC is in itself better than MC as a basis for revival.

factotum wrote:Dan et. al. --- No 'slant' was intended. I remembered Dan telling more or less the story he's just repeated about RG and I can fully appreciate his reaction, which to a large extent I share. Gendall speaks Cornish so that it sounds like a natural language, whereas many (but not all) other 'fluent' speakers sound quite unnatural, just as Dan says. My point, in as far as one was implied, was that UC left behind it a 'tradition of mispronunciation' which needs to be tackled, not that LC is in itself better than MC as a basis for revival.

I like Gendall's rendition it seems like a performance like Jackanory. Its probably not inconsequential that many of the more fluid Cornish speakers are often performers. Even for some people who might be considered reasonably fluent it's not necessarily easy to give a performance in front of a microphone or video-camera.

Michael, what a load of bollocks you talk. At least I know enough about the subject to see through it, although others are no doubt taken in by your assumed 'expert' status. Given that MC 'vy' (I) gives LC 'vee' whereas MC 'ny' (we) gives LC 'nei', combined with the fact that these two pronouns are identical in function, stress etc., it follows that the MC grapheme 'y' must here conceal two underlying and contrasting phonemes, just as 'th' conceals /D/ and /T/, 's' /s/ and /z/ etc. And this is supported by comparative data, showing that the vowels in 'vy' and 'ni' are different in origin. It follows then, by simple common sense apart from anything else, that if two sounds feed into MC, and two come out the other side into LC, and since we know that MC spelling was not up to the job of distinguishing all the sounds of that stage of the language, that in this case the two sounds persisted throughout, just that they weren't distinguished in MC. This is called 'taking note of all stages of the language'.

factotum wrote:My point, in as far as one was implied, was that UC left behind it a 'tradition of mispronunciation' which needs to be tackled, not that LC is in itself better than MC as a basis for revival.

Conan, don't you think that the fact that Dick has been speaking Cornish for 80 years might have something to do with it? That's far longer than anyone currently alive. He began to learn the language at the age of 4.

I've seen a splendid photo of Dick pointing over a cliff at a seabird, when he and Tony Snell were at one of Helena Charles' Cornish sessions. Now that would have been an occasion where being a fly on the wall merited consideration!

Anselm

'Against a promontory my ship' Rump L. Stiltz-Kinn

'With regret I feel that unless you have a serious change of heart your presence at the Mennaye on Cornish Pirates match days is no longer desired.'Rod Coward
CEO
Cornish Pirates

Not that I know. As well as her work for Cornwall, she has diligent for other humanitarian causes. She did a great deal for the Heligolanders evicted in the Forties, and I've a suspicion that she was one of the key figures in solving the problems of the tribes of feral cats in Venice.

Anselm

'Against a promontory my ship' Rump L. Stiltz-Kinn

'With regret I feel that unless you have a serious change of heart your presence at the Mennaye on Cornish Pirates match days is no longer desired.'Rod Coward
CEO
Cornish Pirates

I'm looking into Gendall's JCH recording (actually just the begining, the bit Boson transcribed less a line or two). But before we get into that, the first few words of JCH Boson wrote as :

En termen ez passiez thera trigaz en St. Levan ...

Which here is identical to Lhuyd's version. Note 'trigaz' is most probably an error for 'trigez' "settled, established", since this is the normal idiom.

In MC we'd have :

Yn termyn eus passyyz 'th eze trigyz yn Sen Leven ...

So all the MC y's (and the eu) regularly change to LC e's. This happens regardless of whether they're stressed or unstressed, long, half-long or short. The only exception is where MC -y is final and stressed (e,g. -vy 'me, my'). So there is no need to mark any 'y's in MC to assist LC users, except perhaps 'vy' etc. (General rule, mark the unusual cases). In the case of LC, to be comprehensible to MC users all the 'e's from 'y's would need to be marked, (and the 'e's from 'eu's also but differently).

Michael's practice of marking only long stressed MC y which quite regularly becomes LC e, really makes no sense at all -- it is completely illogical, would appear to confuse rather than assist, and seems to reflect nothing more than a personal whim.